Ghana Must Emulate Botswana’s Ethical Foreign Policy!

Apart from diamonds, providence did not bless Botswana with much – but it gave her a crop of very wise and honest leaders: who have used the little that Mother Nature gave them to provide their people with one of the highest living standards in Africa.

Even when disaster has struck, such as it did when HIV/AIDS swept through their population, they have ensured the welfare of their people, by putting into place one of the most comprehensive HIV/AIDS care-management regimes anywhere in the world – ensuring that all Batswana living with HIV/AIDS (which unfortunately, happens to be a substantial proportion of the total population) have retroviral drugs to enable them stay well and remain productive throughout their working years.

It is instructive that that nation is the one country in Africa, in which corruption does not thrive. Unlike elsewhere in the continent, national standards have not fallen, since it gained its independence (from the UK). Significantly, Botswana also has a foreign policy that is based on morality, not political expediency – and in that sense is far ahead of the curve, globally.

One can contrast their decency in that regard with the perfidy of the G8 nations, for example – who talk endlessly about integrity and ethics but practice neither: in both their domestic and foreign policies.

An example is the latest wheeze by the G8 leaders. They are now talking about the need for integrity and ethics in order to prevent another global financial crisis developing in future – yet, they, who are largely responsible for a greater part of the greenhouse gases that have caused the disastrous change in climatic conditions globally, and who spent trillions of their taxpayers’ money to bailout private banks (brought to their knees by greed and risk-taking driven by short-term thinking), will never keep their promises to provide the required money for the biggest victims of global climate change (the economically hard-pressed African nations least responsible for that worldwide catastrophe), to fund amelioration programmes designed to combat the most negative effects of global climate change in the continent.

Nations in today’s world must behave in a moral fashion – and let their foreign policy be underpinned by ethical considerations. It came as no surprise, to those who wish to see less cynicism in international politics, that Botswana, whose leaders have ensured that their society is underpinned by an ethos based on integrity and ethics, quickly issued a statement that it was disassociating itself, from the AU’s nonsensical and immoral (my words, not theirs!) stand, on the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) indictment of Sudanese President Omar Bashir.

Clearly, the leaders of Botswana refuse to close their eyes to the abomination occurring in Darfur, and elsewhere in Sudan – and consequently have no desire to see the indicted mastermind behind the pogrom in Darfur escape justice. They also refused to close their eyes as millions of Zimbabweans suffered untold hardship as result of the actions of the tyrants in Zimbabwe (before the government of national unity was formed there) – whiles the AU maintained a deafening silence.

It is heartening to know that the capricious Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, was not be able to bully Botswana into suspending its ethical foreign policy on that issue – because they are a principled lot. The question is: Why did Ghana not stand side by side with Botswana on this particular issue?

For Nkrumah’s Ghana to give succour to that racist and mass-murderer, Omar Bashir, is unconscionable – and President Mills of Ghana, who believes in, and personifies integrity and ethical behaviour (that the G8 have paid lip-service to for decades but do not practice, incidentally), must replace his foreign minister for not showing sufficient leadership and recommending that the government of Ghana too, does what Botswana has done, in rejecting the AU’s untenable and shameful position, on the issue of the ICC’s indictment of President Omar Bashir.

Why did Ghana’s delegation to the AU summit in Libya have to cave in to the Libyan leader’s blatant arm-twisting: on an issue to do with the fundamental human rights of our fellow black Africans – and allow him to railroad that shameful summit resolution, on non-cooperation with the ICC in executing the arrest warrant for the Sudanese leader, through the conference floor?

Colonel Gaddafi,  as we all know, happens to be the leader of a nation in which black Africans are treated in the most appalling of fashions – which is exactly the way Sudan’s racists, the so-called ‘Arabs,’ also treat their own black African citizens. It is still not too late for Ghana to follow Botswana’s example – and issue a statement disassociating our country from the AU’s untenable stand on that issue.

As a result of our commitment to promoting ethnic equality and multi-ethnic harmony in Africa, a number of Nkrumaists (including me) who are active in the pan-Africanist movement, became implacable opponents of the former regime – because of President Kufuor’s persistence in pursuing that outrageous Akan tribal-supremacist agenda of his, which was designed to foist his tribal Chief on the nation, as a de facto monarch.

That pure nonsense on bamboo stilts, in the nation of diverse-ethnicity that Nkrumah succeeded in moulding into a united country, whose citizens shared a common destiny, was simply too much for us to stomach. It was a travesty that ended up dividing our country, as never before, since Ghana gained her independence in 1957.

If the current regime too (like its unprincipled predecessor regime before it) continues to be obdurate about not cooperating with the ICC in regard to its arrest warrant for that ‘Arab’ racist who is intent on ethnic-cleansing Darfur of its entire black African population, then the question a nobody, a fool, and an ignoramus like me would like Ghana’s foreign minister to answer is: are pan-Africanists and Nkrumaists in Ghana (who believe that sovereignty ultimately lies in the hands of the ordinary people of Africa, not their rulers, and that the human rights of ordinary Africans are inviolable), to conclude that those in power in Ghana today, think that the human rights of Africans can be violated by their leaders with impunity?

Well, if that is the case, then we shall have to conclude that this is a regime that will not base its foreign policy on ethical considerations – which will mean therefore, that the Mills administration will have to count Kofi Thompson as one of its most implacable opponents, henceforth.

I despise those who wield power and think that life can be conveniently compartmentalized – and that one can be an honest person and behave ethically in one aspect of one’s life and be unprincipled and thoroughly dishonest, in other areas of one’s life (one is ether honest or one is not – there can be nothing in-between from the two, in my humble view).

That is precisely the kind of cynicism and logic informing the immorality that fuels the unprincipled actions of the decadent Munkata-types who still lurk in the Mills regime (and are said to be responsible for the cover-up of that scandal by our secret services, by the way).

Incidentally, we are waiting to see what the president will do about prosecuting Alhaji Munkata, the former minister for youth and sports, for the misuse of public funds to pay for expenses to do with an overseas trip undertaken by his girlfriend at taxpayers’ expense. Incredibly, that man is reported to have issued a warning recently about what he calls an “anti-North agenda” in our national life that he thinks is afoot in Ghana today.

Having got away thus far with not being prosecuted by what is increasingly beginning to look like a spineless and cynical regime (in some respects!), that is hesitant to prosecute those “on-side” who take our country for a ride with impunity, he now also has the gall to try and stoke up ethnic tensions in Ghana – compounding his many sins: by talking glibly about an “anti-North” agenda.

We shall see how the Mills administration will justify prosecuting the crooks in the previous regime – if it fails to prosecute that man Munkata. But I digress. On the issue of foreign policy, the president must not allow immorality to become the defining characteristic of his regime – if he wants to leave a good legacy behind. He and his foreign minister should never have allowed the capricious Colonel Gaddafi’s disgraceful arm-twisting to end up making them concur to the AU’s foolishness: and thereby tarnishing Ghana’s good name – just for the sake of a racist and a mass-murderer like that brutal dictator Omar Bashir.

The Mills regime must not forget that we are a nation in which common decency and values still mean something – and in such situations at future AU summits we must always ally ourselves to principled nations like Botswana, not Sudan and Libya: which are both run by ruthless dictators. If this regime continues along this path some of us will become the most implacable of its foes – and even though I am an uneducated fellow who can barely read and write, I do wield a mean pen: which I shall deploy in my opposition to what appears to be gradually turning out to be a rather cynical regime too (in certain respects!), one fears.

The nagging zillion-cedi question is: In the end, will it also turn out to be much like its predecessor, perhaps? Nkrumah’s Ghana, must, by definition, gain a reputation for being a nation that always stands up for the oppressed in Africa. Surely, we did not spend our nation’s scarce resources to help bring freedom to the continent (by being instrumental in ridding Africa of its colonial occupiers), just to end up empowering oppressive rulers in Africa, and allowing them to maim and kill the selfsame citizens, whom they are obliged by international treaties and conventions to protect: without protesting loudly and expressing our sense of outrage?

The Mills administration must understand clearly that Ghana must never support any African regime that brutalizes its own citizens under any circumstances – and support for President Bashir, a man leading a regime committing the most egregious of crimes against humanity, is simply untenable: more so, when he will eventually end up before the ICC in The Hague in any case, as sure as day follows night.

It is only a matter of time – and it may take two years or twenty (to paraphrase the ICC’s prosecutor Luis Campo-Morenho); but appear before it, he will. Will Ghana’s leaders be able to look the people of Darfur in the eye when that finally happens? We must be on the right side of history in this matter: which is to be firmly on the side of the people of Darfur.

Above all, we must never allow Colonel Gaddafi to bully our country: just because our leaders think that our nation needs his oil and on favourable terms. The plain truth is that he himself is a dictator and a hypocrite – who talks endlessly about African unity, whiles presiding over a nation-state that has consistently treated desperate young black Africans (escaping the hell-holes their corrupt leaders have turned their nations into), who have ended up in Libyan territory illegally, capriciously.

Ghana has a worthy and fitting ally in Botswana, in the fight to protect the human rights of all ordinary Africans. To make such a Machiavellian philosophy the guiding principle of our foreign policy is to declare our nation a most cynical one – and that cannot be right for a supposedly civilized and modern African nation-state regarded the world over as a beacon of peace and stability in Africa.

In what is supposed to be the age of the African Renaissance, it is imperative that Nkrumah’s Ghana, like Botswana, has an ethical foreign policy – not one based on expediency and hypocrisy.